Boris Island might be the final answer. Indeed, the government is again showing support for the Boris-backed idea of building a brand new airport in the Thames Estuary.

Potentially located at the Isle of Grain in Kent, the airport would have a capacity of 150 million passengers per year, which is about the double of the actual number of people going through Heathrow today. It would be built as a four-runway airport and designed to be an international hub, linked to the rest of the country by high-speed connections.

Many proposals have been put forward to answer the need for more airport capacity in the London area, such as a third runway at Heathrow Airport, extra runways at Gatwick and Stansted and a bizarre Heath-wick high-speed rail link between Heathrow and Gatwick...

While government opinion has been quite volatile so far, at present there seems to be more and more support for the establishment of a new airport, although this would be the grandest, lengthiest and costliest of projects - its cost estimated to be at about 50 million pounds.

As Colin Matthews, chief executive of airport operator BAA, explains: 'the recognition today is that it matters to the UK economy, to jobs and to growth. There's no reason why an option should be ruled out.' By not doing something about it, the UK is losing its competitive advantage against its rival hub airports like Paris Charles de Gaulle or Schiphol in Amsterdam, which are just sucking more and more flights away from London.

Foster and Partners has already sketched out a design for Boris Island, though not taking into account the millions of birds who have made their homes in the estuary - a serious environmental matter that would need to be looked at if Boris Island were to be given the green light.

Although the government is seriously considering this option and intending to start a consultation process for the project, the department for transport has claimed that no final decision has been taken yet and different options are still to be discussed, keeping in mind that the ultimate aim is to maintain 'the UK's aviation hub status'.